150,000 more reasons to improve your gender intelligence
More than 150,000 community sector workers are about to receive a long-awaited pay rise and the majority are women, who will now be seriously thinking about how they will spend this bonus. Additionally, the community organisations where many of these women work will also benefit from a government contribution of $2 billion over six years.
This means that the women running these businesses will need to invest in new technology, products and services to support the expansion which will now follow.
But if you still don’t have a gender intelligent culture within your business which recognises these women when she walks into your store and then genuinely connects with her, then you will be left behind as she and her friends continue to migrate where they feel understood.
Going back to basics, we need to remember that men and women operate from a different mindset when they make decisions and this includes shopping for either their businesses, themselves or their families.
Her system of problem-solving takes a long time and involves making everything personal and leading with her emotions in a quest to see how she would feel about each possible solution.
Now this may be frustrating for a male sales assistant who doesn’t understand that the female shopper is taking due consideration about the purchase. They can appear pushy and insincere when they try to close the sale.
They may even unconsciously communicate to the shopper that she is somehow not “up to the job” particularly if she is shopping with a male, where they obviously make an immediate connection.
As Australian shoppers have snapped their purses shut during 2011 this situation may even be exacerbated as she takes even longer to makes up her mind, while the sales assistant become even more anxious to push her towards a decision.
What they need to remember is that while the language used to describe a woman’s problem solving process is often negative, the end conclusion is, “her decisions always end up being the right ones.”
Stephanie Holland from She Economy explains why understanding a woman’s buying process is crucial when you are in a sales situation.
1.Give her enough time – if a woman says “she needs to think about it,” she is not saying no. Women complain that men move in too soon for the close. If she’s not ready to buy, ask her “do you have any questions or concerns I haven’t addressed?” to see if she is missing crucial information, then let her go do her processing and set up another appointment. She will appreciate this!
2.Make an emotional connection- Ask her questions, find out everything you can about her situation, her concerns, the people her decision will affect. By asking questions and really listening to her answers, you are building trust – the most important emotion in a sale to a woman.
By understanding theses simple differences between how men and women make buying decisions and implementing them into your sales force, not only will you increase sales but you will be way ahead of the competition that just don’t have time to be gender intelligent.